Shoot U!

Back when I used to do a lot of gaming on my iPod Touch (something I've barely touched since getting my Droid... TOUCHED! Get it? HAHA!) I had a neat puzzle game called Ragdoll Blaster. I was reminded of it because Ragdoll Blaster 2 was just released. In it you have a canon and have to shoot ragdolls in an effort to hit a star with one of them. While it has a puzzle element to it, it also couples that with a shooter element and they combine for a neat mix.

So today I'm looking to try something new and I download Shoot U! from Camel Games because it's pretty highly rated. Now, with a description of "hand drawn styled physics game" and no screenshots I really didn't know what to expect so I was quite surprised that it's Ragdoll Blaster for the Android. Fortunately that's a good thing as Ragdoll Blaster is one of about three games I played almost through the end because it's so much fun.

In Shoot U! your goal is to shoot ragdolls out of your canon and to hit the red star with them. For example, take a look at the screenshot. There's a boulder on a green rope and I'm trying to shoot the star. This is one of the early levels in the game and you need to shoot at the rope to move the boulder so that it knocks the star off AND then you have to shoot the star before it disappears off of the bottom of the screen. The levels (and there are 80 of them) show some great creativity and even when you think you've solved some of the latter ones there's the arcade element of getting the timing right with your shots.

The graphics are hand drawn, but that seems to have developed into a style of its own with mobile games although it's pretty basic artwork here. There's not much in the way of audio to talk about. The core of this game it the physics engine plus its associated animation and they works great. Firing the cannon is done by tapping on the screen. Tapping moves the blue site and fires the canon at it. The distance from the canon determines the shots power and the location determines the angle. The ragdolls then flop around as they fly through the air on what is hopefully on a trip to their intended target.

This is a fun game and perfect for a mobile device where it can be played for minutes at a time. I've come to the recent conclusion that I don't really want games that take hours to play on my phone because if I'm playing for that long then I'll probably visit my Xbox 360 instead. The game also doesn't make the mistake of forcing me to trudge through each level to get to the hard ones... I can skip right to them. I'm going to be looking for that now that I've become so aware of it.

Finally, I saw a comment from some guy saying he'd buy this if it were $1 cheaper. Give me a break! The game is $2.99 and it's great and is a great entertainment value. It'll take at least a couple hours to complete. In response to that I say "Stop being so bloody cheap Android owners!". You really need to check out the Windows Mobile world where games like this cost $10-$20. We have it pretty good because the iPhone lowered the bar on pricing and now everyone thinks all games should be $1. Rant over. Go play Shoot U!